Malfuzat – Volume III — Page 133
133 Ultimately, until a person is granted strength and power from Allah Almighty, which is referred to as the Holy Spirit in Islamic terminology, nothing can be done. This is a power that is received from God Almighty. As soon as this power descends, tranquillity fills the heart, and a love and fondness for virtue is fostered in one’s nature. With pleasure and joy, in the likeness of a child who happily eats a delicious treat, such an individual naturally hastens to perform the same good deed, which others must strain and burden themselves to do. In the same man- ner, when one develops a relationship with God Almighty and His Holy Spirit descends upon him, good deeds appear to one as though they were a refreshing and fragrant sherbet. The individual in question begins to see the beauty in good deeds and hastens towards them uncontrollably. Even the thought of sin causes his soul to tremble, as it were. These matters are of such a nature that I cannot express them fully in words. For these are states of the heart and one can only understand them fully by experienc- ing them. It is then that fresh and vivid forms of light are granted to such a one. 1 Tenderness of Heart A person should not pride themselves and believe that they have reached the highest limit of their own development on the mere fact that sometimes they feel an inner emotion. This emotion is temporary. Many a time when someone reads a novel and reaches a painful point in the plot, they begin to weep helplessly, even though they know full well that this is an imaginary work of fiction. Therefore, if mere weeping and emotion was the root of true pleasure and joy, there would be no one greater in attaining spiritual pleasure than the people of Europe, because they publish thousands of novels and hundreds and thousands, nay, tens of mil- lions read these stories and cry. The fact of the matter is that a trait of human nature is that a person will laugh at something of humour and when they come across something that causes tears, they weep; and in the relevant situations, humans feel a sense of pleasure in this expression. However, this pleasure has no bearing on spirituality. When a per- son falls in love with some woman, even in this state of immorality, they will write poetic couplets about the absence of their beloved and weep. This is a fac- ulty that humans possess and it can be exercised appropriately or inappropriate- ly. Therefore, one should not sit content at the mere fact that they possess this 1 Al-Hakam , vol. 5, no. 13, dated 10 April 1901, pp. 5-6 p. 119